Roman Conquests: Egypt & Judæa

By John D. Grainger

Egypt was the last of the Macedonian Successor states to be swallowed up by Roman expansion. The Ptolemaic rulers had allied themselves to Rome while their rivals went down fighting. However, Cleopatra's famous love affair with Marc Antony ensured she was on the wrong side of the Roman civil war between him and Octavian (later to become Caesar Augustus). After the defeat of Antony and Cleopatra at the naval battle of Actium, Octavian swiftly brought Egypt under direct Roman control, though it took several campaigns to fully subjugate the whole country. These campaigns have previously been largely neglected.Judaea was a constant source of trouble for the Romans, as it had been for the Seleucids, the previous overlords of the region. The Romans at first were content to rule through client kings like the infamous Herod but were increasingly sucked in to direct military involvement to suppress religiously-inspired revolts.John Grainger's clear narrative and insightful analysis of these campaigns allows the reader to understand how Rome eventually brought this strategically vital region fully within their empire.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jul 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9781473826632

John D. Grainger

John D. Grainger is a former teacher turned professional historian. He has over thirty books to his name, divided between classical history and modern British political and military history. His previous books for Pen & Sword are Hellenistic and Roman Naval Wars; Wars of the Maccabees; Traditional Enemies: Britain’s War with Vichy France 1940-42; Roman Conquests: Egypt and Judaea; Rome, Parthia and India: The Violent Emergence of a New World Order: 150-140 BC; a three-volume history of the Seleukid Empire and British Campaigns in the South Atlantic 1805-1807.

Book preview

Introduction

The lands of the eastern and south-eastern corner of the Mediterranean, Syria and Egypt had been the centres of power of two of the Great Powers of the ancient world since the days of Alexander the Great. But by 64 BC these lands had fallen on evil days, with no viable kingdom of Syria left, and misgovernment rife in Egypt. Syria had broken into a confusing medley of cities, kingdoms, tyrants, bandits, and rebels. And Rome, greedy for money and territory as always, was poised in the north to grab.

They may be geographical neighbours, but to link Judaea and Egypt into an account of their conquest by Rome is rather like yoking an ass and an ox in a ploughing contest. Egypt was conquered in a brief campaign of no more than a year; Judaea fought repeatedly to avoid such a fate, in wars lasting over a century. (This is an exaggeration, of course, and the conquest of Egypt took longer, though it was less violent than that of Judaea, and the Judaean wars were intermittent, but the contrast does exist.) Further, the two peoples did not particularly like each other, and their main rulers, Kleopatra and Herod, scarcely got on.

Nevertheless the link exists. Besides being neighbours, they were deeply involved in the final paroxysms of the Roman civil wars which destroyed the republic, as participants, exploiters, and eventually victims. The responses of the two were, however, different, the Egyptians submitting with scarcely a murmur, the Jews of Judaea fiercely and repeatedly resisting.

So, despite the obvious power of the Roman state, the elimination of the local rulers who occupied the land from the Taurus Mountains to the deserts of Egypt did not happen easily. It was already clear in 64 BC that Rome was capable of conquering all these places, probably in a single campaign, but instead it took 170 years to complete the task.

There are many reasons for this lethargy, partly Roman, partly local. Rome itself, of course, collapsed into a series of civil wars, which, at least in the east, delayed conquest. In the region itself there were unexpectedly stubborn resistances to conquest from a variety of groups, above all, but not only, from the Jews of Judaea. It did not help that a major and unconquerable power – Parthia – loomed nearby, equally willing to snap up bits of territory. Then there was Roman over-confidence, producing distant expeditions far beyond the empire’s capabilities.

For the warfare in this corner of the Mediterranean extended over a much wider area than the two countries in the title. Roman aggression extended itself deep into Asia, Africa, and Arabia, and had done so even before the conquest of Syria had been completed. The continued existence of the Judaean state in a condition of semi-independence helped to maintain other Syrian kingdoms in the same condition, so that the destruction of Judaea was eventually accompanied by the final annexations of several of these other kingdoms.

It is thus a complicated tale, very different from the conquests achieved elsewhere, though the bit-by-bit acquisitions of Asia Minor and North Africa show similarities. The two countries which are here singled out for special treatment, Judaea and Egypt, merit it because their sources of information are rather better than other parts of the region, and this makes it possible to discuss what happened in those two countries in some detail. And yet, the geographical range cannot be confined to these two places. To understand the events it is also necessary to consider the rest of Syria, Arabia and Egypt’s southern neighbour.

In the end, after much conflict, Rome ruled all Syria and Egypt, but in the process the imperial government discovered that there were areas which it was not able to reach. By 20 BC this had become clear and the expansion of Rome in the east effectively ended, except for mopping up several client states which Rome already dominated. Thirty years later, the same realization struck home in Germany, with the destruction of three legions by the Germans in the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9. Again, in Britain in the AD 80s, the same happened when Agricola failed to conquer Scotland. One might liken the Roman Empire to a caged bull, butting in all directions in frantic attempts to escape its imprisonment. It was in the East that the first check to this took place. It seems likely that by 20 BC Augustus had begun to formulate the policy which he eventually passed on as advice to his successor Tiberius: not to expand the empire further.

Chapter 1

Judaea: Pompey’s Conquest

The Roman state reached Syria in 64 BC in the person of the General Cn. Pompeius Magnus (‘Pompey’), his legates, and his army. Syria – taken to be all the land between the Taurus Mountains and Egypt – had, Pompey claimed, become Roman because he had defeated the Armenian King Tigranes, who in turn had more or less ruled it for the last few years. In fact, the land Pompey entered was in widespread political confusion. Whether he intended to annex it or not, declaring it to be annexed by Rome was a means of giving himself and Rome a free hand to sort things out.¹

As an example of this process we have a notice in the Jewish historian Josephus. As Tigranes came south to tackle Ptolemais, which was on the northern Palestinian coast, the ruler of Judaea, Queen Salome Alexandra ‘sent many valuable gifts and envoys to him’. That is, she submitted well before he could attack the kingdom. The message she sent was to ask him ‘to grant favourable terms’. Tigranes ‘gave them reason to hope for the best’, and made a point of saying he accepted Judaea’s ‘homage’.² Salome was particularly prompt in her message, but, on a different timescale, this was how Tigranes established himself in his Syrian province.

The prospect of any further measures of control imposed by Tigranes evaporated along with his power when the news of Pompey’s arrival in Syria came, but it was the political supremacy Tigranes had achieved which became the basis for Pompey’s actions in Syria. He was, of course, much assisted by the extreme disintegration of Syria, and by the shallowness of the power of many of the rulers he encountered. Indeed, some of these rulers had only emerged since Tigranes withdrew; others had extended their reach in the power vacuum before Pompey arrived. But the subordination of the Syrians was, at least in Roman eyes, transferred to Rome as a result of Rome’s defeat of their overlord Tigranes. At the same time it was evident almost from the first that Pompey was anxious to avoid much fighting. This enabled most of the Syrian states to make terms and survive.

On his way south from the Taurus passes and through Syria during 64, Pompey investigated the status of each community. Cities which were autonomous were generally left that way; cities subject to dictators were usually freed; monarchies might be abolished or preserved. The whole process was purely pragmatic, even erratic, but it was in its results just as superficial as Tigranes’ measures. So the four great cities of northern Syria – Seleukeia, Antioch, Laodikeia, Apamea – became autonomous cities in the new Roman province of Syria, as did a flock of smaller cities in the area. But Seleukeia-Zeugma, controlling the vital bridge over the Euphrates, which had been seized by the king of Kommagene, remained his, as did the small city of Doliche; he was a moderately powerful ruler at such a vital spot and this was a defensive necessity. He helped insulate Syria from Parthia to the east. The tyrants of Lysias and Tripolis, Silas the Jew and Dionysios, both very recent powers, were removed. The remaining Seleukid royal representatives, already driven out once by Tigranes were unceremoniously dismissed. Their pretensions, given even a foothold of power, would have caused continuous disruption as they attempted to recover their old power. Pompey merely confirmed Tigranes’ action.³

As he came to central Syria, Pompey encountered a series of monarchies, all of which had established their rule over a number of Greek cities. The Hill Chieftain Kinyras had taken control of Byblos and Berytos and some smaller cities on the northern Lebanese coast; Pompey ‘restored’ the cities’ ‘freedom’, which they celebrated by instigating a new dating era.⁴ Several menacing hill forts were destroyed. Inland he found two monarchies, the Ituraean kingdom centred on the Bekaa Valley, and the Arab kingdom of Emesa, under Samsigeramos, in the upper valley of the Orontes River.⁵ Both survived. The Ituraean ruler Ptolemy son of Mennaeus lost none of his territory, which included Chalkis and Baalbek, but he had to pay a thousand talents into Pompey’s war chest.⁶

In all this Pompey showed a certain bias towards freeing cities from monarchic or tyrannical rule, but where stable monarchies existed they were allowed to continue. The Ituraean kingdom, for example, controlled an awkward area of mountain land as well as the southern Bekaa Valley and its two cities. Without a native ruler the region was likely to be turbulent and to require the repeated attentions of Roman troops and governors. Similarly the Emesan kings dominated a fairly remote area and a desert region which controlled a major desert route towards Babylonia by way of the oasis of Palmyra. It was economical to leave both of these kings in control. Beyond these kingdoms, the city of Damascus had long been the target of Ituraean and other rulers, was now firmly established as autonomous, with a Roman officer present from early on. On the coast, the old cities of Tyre and Sidon and others continued or revived in autonomy.

It seems that Pompey was able to deal with northern and central Syria relatively easily. There is no record of his forces having to fight anywhere, except in the suppression of some hill forts. The tyrants and kings who were dispatched apparently went quietly – though Dionysios of Tripolis and Kinyras were executed. The reason for the ease of the Roman takeover, of course, is that in most cases Pompey did not threaten anyone, and the Roman arrival, like that of Tigranes, meant the restoration of peace. Kings here and there may have had to give up a Greek city or two, but it was quickly understood that acquiescence to the new Roman power would bring confirmation of the king’s position. Pompey’s progress southwards was preceded by that of his legates, several of whom are known by name. He sent off these messengers in advance who researched the local situations, made clear the obligations Rome expected them to undertake, and produced draft agreements which Pompey would accept, modify and ratify on his arrival.

By late in 64, he arrived in Damascus. The city itself was not a problem. Two legates, L. Lollius and Q. Caecilius Metellus Nepos, had been in the city the year before, and no doubt had made it clear to the city’s neighbours (and its council) that it was under Roman protection. In advance of Pompey, yet another legate, M. Aemilius Scaurus, reached the city, but this time his purpose was to assess the situation further south.⁷

Southern Syria consisted of two major kingdoms, Judaea and Nabataea, and a scatter of independent cities. Due south of Damascus, Ptolemy of Ituraea had conquered the rough basalt lands of Batanaea and Trachonitis, including some small cities.⁸ His real aim had been to gain control of Damascus, but he was regularly thwarted, above all by the Damascenes who preferred to accept almost any master to the Ituraean. The arrival of the Romans was their definitive rescue. Beyond Batanaea was the kingdom of the Nabataeans, which included a series of desert or near-desert regions east of the Jordan Valley, and stretched south for 600 km into north Arabia. As a state it had emerged perhaps a century earlier and at one point its king controlled Damascus itself, though his rule had later been rejected by the Damascenes. Most of Nabataea’s boundaries were vague and its true extent is difficult to discern. Its political and religious centre had long been the city of Petra, but as the kingdom had spread north, the better-watered lands of Auranitis (east of the Sea of Galilee) became more important; the later city of Bostra was developing even at this time. This northern part of the kingdom was more productive and more populous than the rest of the kingdom, hence its developing importance.⁹

The Nabataeans had gathered considerable wealth by trade, being the intermediaries between the rich cities of Syria and the land around the Mediterranean and the producers of spices and incenses in southern Arabia and India. Some of this wealth was spent on the elaboration of Petra, particularly its tomb architecture, and some went into the ingenious development of water conservation and desert agriculture; the land was not wholly dry, of course, much of it being steppe land. This pastureland was also the basis of the kingdom’s military strength, which was largely in cavalry. The favourite fighting tactic of the Nabataeans was to retreat before an attacker into the desert, and then to harass him to destruction; the Nabataean armies had enjoyed considerable success using these methods.¹⁰ Their kings were not overly aggressive, but had regularly defeated all attacks. Indeed the kingship had probably developed in reaction to attacks by neighbours, particularly Judaea.

Judaea was the only state in Syria at this time of whose internal affairs we have any detailed information.¹¹ In these internal affairs it was more fraught than in the other states, thanks to its curious history. The kingdom had developed from a religious rebellion, during which leaders had made themselves kings, a not unfamiliar process even now. There were still groups who were unwilling to accept a royal government, and hankered for a theocracy. Pharisees and Saducees were the main rival parties, but there were others. The kings had the task of balancing between these factions: Salome Alexandra, for example, tended to favour the Pharisees, who were more rigorous in the application of the Jewish law than the Saducees. The irony was that, despite owing its origin to a rebellion against Greek customs and religion, in order to survive the Judaean state had had to adopt many of the trappings of the surrounding Greek states, including the use of the Greek language. The Pharisees and others might see this as a betrayal of the revolutionary heritage.

By the time Scaurus arrived Salome Alexandra was dead (in 67), and her two sons had quarrelled over the succession. Hyrkanos II was already high priest by virtue of his birth as the eldest son, and had been made king as well before Salome died; the younger son, Aristoboulos II, had ousted him from that post, though Hyrkanos kept the position of high priest. Scaurus arrived as the fighting between the forces of the two brothers had become centred on the siege of the city of Jerusalem. Hyrkanos had made an alliance with the Nabataean King Aretas, and together they had shut Aristoboulos up in the fortified Jerusalem temple.¹²

The arrival of Roman authority, in the person of Scaurus, rapidly brought this confrontation to an end. On investigating the dispute Scaurus opted in favour of Aristoboulos as king. Josephus claims that this was because Aristoboulos offered the bigger bribe, but he also notes that he had been the more reasonable in his demands. Aristoboulos was also the more capable governor, and Scaurus clearly wanted to get Aretas away from Judaea and back into his own kingdom. The sheer power of the Roman state is demonstrated here, for Scaurus, who had no more than a personal guard with him, was able to impose terms on all three participants. Aretas withdrew with his forces, but Aristoboulos attacked his army as he went, winning a rather inconsequential victory. Scaurus returned to Damascus. Hyrkanos went off with Aretas.¹³

This was not the end of the matter. Scaurus’ settlement was no more than an armistice. It was Pompey who would pronounce the final terms when he arrived. Therefore, when he reached Damascus, in early 63, he was confronted by the two claimants in person, and by a third group, claiming to speak for the ‘people’.¹⁴

Pompey heard the arguments, but put off a decision. He had other matters to consider, and he must have been told by Scaurus of the size and bellicose nature of Judaea, and the strength of fortified Jerusalem. One of his problems was the Nabataeans, whose involvement in the Judaean crisis had brought them to Roman notice, perhaps for the first time. (It very much looks as though Pompey and the Romans generally had only the sketchiest knowledge of the political geography of Syria when he arrived; the legates’ job was thus in part to scout out the various situations for him.) The arguments of the claimants to the Judaean kingship were complex and arcane, and he probably wanted to find out more about the two men before deciding.

The Roman force under Pompey’s command marched south out of Damascus. He had Aristoboulos with him, and it seems he was inclining towards recognizing him as Judaean king. It is not clear where Hyrkanos was, but later he was with Pompey, together with Antipater, a rich Idumaean Jew who was advising him. Probably all three men were taken along with the Romans on the march. The Roman force was marching, says our only source (Josephus), ‘against the Nabataeans’; it arrived at Dion, a Greek city which was under Judaean control, where the army was close to the boundary of the Judaean lands with the joint city-state of Philadelphia-Gerasa, which was sandwiched between the two kingdoms. Aristoboulos left the army and crossed the Jordan to the fortress of Alexandreion just south of the Auja River, the boundary of Judaea and the city of Skythopolis.¹⁵

These geographical details are important because they lead to an interpretation of these events which is different from that which Josephus has put forward. He claims that Aristoboulos left the Roman expedition without Pompey’s permission, and that he did so intending to raise Judaea in rebellion against Rome. Certainly Pompey soon afterwards turned away from the march route he had been following and also crossed the Jordan, having apparently called up a larger force of ‘auxiliaries from Damascus and the rest of Syria, as well as the Roman legions already at his disposal’. He then, says Josephus, ‘marched against Aristoboulos’.¹⁶

Taking heed of the geography of these events, a different interpretation presents itself. The route of Pompey’s march to Dion implies that he was aiming to attend to the Nabataeans first – as Josephus himself says. He stopped at Dion, having marched through Judaean territory on the Golan plateau and past, or through, the territories of several small Greek cities, some independent, some in the Judaean kingdom. Beyond Dion he faced Philadelphia-Gerasa, a joint state probably ruled by a hereditary tyrant of the family of Zenon Kotylas, whose enmity towards Judaea was a fixed political fact of the region; beyond that state was the Nabataean kingdom.¹⁷

Pompey would need to negotiate passage through Philadelphia-Gerasa, which would explain the stop at Dion, the last city before the northern Gerasene border. His forces also needed supplies, another matter for negotiation with both Philadelphia and Judaea. And by this time he presumably knew something of the country of the Nabataeans. The army had been marching through very difficult country since Damascus, and the march would only get worse south of Philadelphia – dry, hilly and stony country, which eventually dried into desert. Information about the length of the proposed march, and the fighting methods of the Nabataeans, had no doubt also been gathered by this time; so an expedition to suppress or control Nabataea came to seem more and more difficult the further south he went.

The other geographical point is that, when he followed Aristoboulos, Pompey went into Skythopolis’ territory, but camped at Koreai, just north of the Auja River. Skythopolis was a Macedonian city which had maintained its full independence until about ten years before, and even then had only accepted Judaean suzerainty because it was surrounded by Judaean territory after the conquest and destruction of Pella, across the Jordan by Aristoboulos’ father King Alexander Iannai. Skythopolis was still effectively autonomous within the Judaean kingdom, and no doubt it welcomed Pompey’s arrival as a sign of a possible improvement in its political situation.

Aristoboulos, in the Alexandreion fortress, was only a short distance south of the Auja, perhaps six or seven kilometres from Koreai. He came out of the fortress and negotiated with Hyrkanos. Thus Pompey once again had put himself in the position of an arbitrator, but whatever inclination he had shown earlier towards Aristoboulos had evidently disappeared.¹⁸ It would seem that at Dion Pompey finally realized the difficulty he faced in attacking Nabataea and was interested in finding a face-saving reason for his change of course. The purpose of Aristoboulos in leaving the army at Dion was not to ‘rebel’, for he only went as far as the Alexandreion, and had no forces to speak of there. The best explanation for the move is that he intended to organize supplies for the Roman forces and Alexandreion was a useful place at which to collect them. The Roman army was just across the river and was still expected to march on south.

Pompey’s attitude to Aristoboulos had been friendly until then, as Josephus says, but he had made no decision about the Judaean kingship. By camping at Koreai, outside directly ruled Judaean territory, he was in fact respecting Aristoboulos’ sovereignty (just as by camping at Dion, he had respected the autonomy of Philadelphia-Gerasa). But by deflecting his forces from the invasion of Nabataea, Pompey now had to make a decision about Judaea.

Just as it is likely that he learned about Nabataea only as he approached it, so it is probable that Pompey knew little about Judaea before he reached Damascus. Scaurus no doubt had told him what he knew, and the meeting with the rival kings and the third delegation at that city was also part of his education. Another aspect came to his notice on his march to Dion and then to Koreai. He passed Pella, a Greek city which had been destroyed by Alexander Iannai. He had also passed near Gadara, also destroyed – his freedman secretary Demetrios came from there.¹⁹ He passed by, or through, the city of Skythopolis, whose people had long been threatened by Jewish forces, and had no wish to continue under Judaean suzerainty. They, and no doubt Demetrios, could also point to other destroyed cities: Philoteria on the shore of the Sea of Galilee; Samaria, a foundation of Alexander the Great which had been destroyed by Alexander Iannai’s father; Gaza, and others. Pompey’s contacts with the ruler or rulers of Philadelphia-Gerasa will have shown him the enmity felt towards Judaea there. In addition other enquiries will have told him that the Judaean kingdom, besides being politically unstable, controlled many Greek cities like Skythopolis who resented that control.

The meetings between Hyrkanos and Aristoboulos, under Pompey’s supervision, were wholly unsuccessful, and Pompey now had to decide who should be king. He also had to make decisions about the future of the kingdom as a whole. He kept both decisions secret for a time, for he was now faced, for the first time in Syria, with a state capable of putting up a serious resistance to his demands. He persuaded Aristoboulos to give way in stages, so that the Roman decisions could be implemented peacefully. Aristoboulos was also under pressure from his own people, who clearly had a lively appreciation of Roman power and ruthlessness.

The population of Judaea was divided, some supporting Hyrkanos, some Aristoboulos, and others (the third delegation at Damascus) hoping for the abolition of the monarchy; the Greek cities within the kingdom could not be relied on to support any Judaean ruler in a confrontation with the Romans. In effect, the pressure exerted by the mere presence of Pompey and his army had brought the Judaean kingdom to the point of collapse.

Aristoboulos clearly understood that only by doing as Pompey demanded would he be able to remain as king. He was persuaded to surrender the strongholds his people occupied – which seem to have included the Alexandreion – and then returned to Jerusalem.²⁰ Josephus says he then ‘prepared for war’, which may be so, but Aristoboulos and his immediate followers did not want to fight the Romans. Pompey moved his camp to Jericho, just below Jerusalem, and this persuaded Aristoboulos to give in, promising to admit a Roman force into Jerusalem and pay tribute.

Josephus interprets these actions by Aristoboulos as demonstrating a continuing intention to ‘rebel’, but the steady reduction in his power argues the opposite. It is best to assume that he had hopes of being recognized as king, and that by acceding to Pompey’s salami tactics he would eventually succeed. Aristoboulos’ separation from Pompey during much of this time may have allowed Hyrkanos and Antipater to increase their persuasiveness on the Roman, though it seems likely that Pompey was not very susceptible to such whisperings in his ear. It is best to assume that Pompey made his decision during the meetings at Koreai, but had to operate as he did in order to reduce the chance of fighting. So now, with Aristoboulos’ agreement to let him into Jerusalem, and, keeping the king with him, Pompey sent A. Gabinius, another of his legates, to secure the city. But it was too late. Die-hards in the city seized control. Gabinius was shut out.

Pompey took his full army up to the city. He was admitted by a group opposed to Aristoboulos, but Aristoboulos’ supporters seized control of the temple area, which was fortified, and bade defiance to the Romans. Helped by Hyrkanos, whose day had come, Pompey at first tried to negotiate terms of surrender, then set about a regular siege, with artillery bombardments and counter-fortifications, and the construction of a ramp to reach and overtop the walls.²¹

It was perhaps at some point during the siege that the Egyptian King Ptolemy XII contacted Pompey. He offered a crown worth, according to Josephus quoting Strabo, 4,000 pieces of gold, and clothing for the army, but also asked that Pompey assist him in suppressing ‘sedition’ in Egypt.²² This Pompey could not do, for, apart from being busy enough in Palestine, he had no authority to enter Egypt – he was already stretching his imperium by being in Syria. Had he gone into Egypt, there would have been a political explosion in Rome. (It is also claimed that Ptolemy sent, or offered, a force of 8,000 horses, but this is a misreading of the source, where Pompey and the force are mentioned in the same sentence.²³) This contact was the beginning of a new involvement of Egypt, Rome, and Judaea, which developed over the next generation.

Josephus describes the siege of Jerusalem in fairly general terms. He claims that the Jews were beaten only because they would not fight on the Sabbath or on fast days; however, the siege took over two months so it seems probable that fighting was continuous, even during